


Here in These Deep City Lights

by likebrightness



Category: Smash
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likebrightness/pseuds/likebrightness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>She smokes clove cigarettes when she gets really,</em> really <em>drunk.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Here in These Deep City Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: None, really. Oh, there’s a mention of a song that takes place in 1.08 “The Coup.”
> 
> A/N: Sheena gave me the prompt: Derek/Karen, headphones, silk scarf, Zippo lighter. She also helped with some sections.

-

She smokes clove cigarettes when she gets really,  _really_ drunk.  
  
He learns this when he discovers her on the balcony patio at what began as a cast party and turned into debauchery. Eileen rented out some remodeled warehouse or some other hipster type venue; Derek didn’t pay that much attention to anything past open bar. Not because he needs it—he makes plenty enough to buy his own top shelf scotch, thank you—but because how in God’s name did Eileen  _think_ a cast party with an open bar was going to go?  
  
The cast gets hammered. The crew gets hammered. Derek, admittedly, gets a little hammered. So when he realizes it’s been a while since he’s seen Karen, there’s a chance he goes looking for her. He’s just bored, and can only take so much of Tom and Julia drunkenly declaring their love for each other—and honestly,  _everyone_ is hammered. What was Eileen thinking?—so it’s not that he misses Karen, it’s just that he’s bored.  
  
He finds her on the balcony, looking out at the city lights and smoking a clove cigarette. She cusses when she sees him.  
  
"Hello to you, too, darling."  
  
"I’m putting it out, I’m putting it out," she says, dropping the cigarette and crushing it beneath her shoe. "Don’t yell at me."  
  
He tilts his head at her. “Why would I yell at you?”  
  
"Smoking. My voice. Bad." She waves her hands vaguely in the air.  
  
"I don’t mind," he says.  
  
"You don’t?" She gives him a comically skeptical look. He wants to laugh at her, but shakes his head instead. "Well in that case—" She fumbles in the pocket of her jacket and pulls out the pack of cloves and a lighter. She drops the entire pack before she can even get one out to smoke.  
  
"Darling," he says, and picks them up for her.  
  
She pouts, which is obnoxious and attractive and obnoxious because it’s attractive. He gets a clove out and offers it to her; she trades him the lighter for it. He takes the lighter and—  
  
"What the bloody hell?"  
  
The Zippo is painted to look like an American flag blowing in the wind, overlaid with the words, in all caps, “These colors don’t run.”  
  
"It’s—" she says. "You know—U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A."  
  
He’s fairly certain she’s insane. Apparently it shows on his face, because she scoffs and rolls her eyes.  
  
"It’s from college, okay?"  
  
He’s still incredulous, stares at her until she waves the clove in front of his face. He wants to make fun of her, but then she puts it in her mouth and okay, maybe he has a bit of an oral fixation.  
  
Who wouldn’t, though, he thinks as she sucks in air around the cigarette when he lights it. Her lips are—something; round and _luscious_ , honestly, like something out of porn except they’re also _real_. That’s what he likes about her, maybe, that she’s real. That she’s more than an actress or a character or a sex object. He can’t think about her without thinking about how she’s the Golden Sprout Champion and her favorite baseball team is the Quad Cities River Bandits and that there’s a story behind this ridiculous lighter. Whenever he thinks he knows her, understands her, there’s something about her he never considered. He likes that.   
  
He also likes the way she lets smoke swirl in her open mouth before she truly releases it. But he swears—she’s a person, not a sex object. Even if right now he’s not really thinking about much more than that mouth; she’s a person. Maybe he has to remind himself so he doesn’t treat her like just any other woman.  
  
If she were any other woman, he’d push her back against the balcony railing and kiss the smoke out of her mouth. If she were any other woman, she’d be paying him some fucking attention, instead of smoking her clove and staring out at the city. It’s like he’s not there, and he wants to be pissed, except she looks fucking _glorious_. He pretty much always thinks she’s hot, but like this it’s somehow amplified—he’s too drunk to realize that him being drunk is probably  _why_ it’s amplified. If she were any other woman, hot would be hot. He’s never bothered to differentiate between types of hot before, except perhaps hot enough to be worth a certain level of crazy and not hot enough to be worth it. But with Karen, it’s—  
  
She’s hot when she’s onstage. Fuck, when she sang that goddamn  _Touch Me_ song, don’t even get him started. But she’s also hot singing something like _Let Me Be Your Star_. Because she’s bloody  _talented_ and it just makes her more beautiful. She’s hot when she’s self-conscious, too, when she’s half-blushing and not sure she’s doing anything right. It makes him roll his eyes because, Jesus, has she looked in a mirror or listened to her voice or paid any attention to the way people react to her? She has  _zero_ reason to lack confidence. He must make her nervous, or something, because she gets that way around him, too often. He’s lost count of the number of times he’s had to stop himself from flat out telling her everything, everything he thinks about her and feels about her and notices about her and how she’s just _everything_ , because he doesn’t need to tip his hand quite that much, and she needs to figure that out for herself; he can’t just spell it out for her. Sometimes it seems like she’s never going to learn it, though, just like how now she probably has no fucking idea how attractive she is, all smoke and breath and city lights reflected in her eyes.   
  
"You don’t have a clue how hot you are right now, do you?"  
  
Okay so maybe his self-control in regards to not telling her has dried up.   
  
She looks at him, eyes a little wide, which tells him that no, she didn’t have a clue. She takes another drag of her cigarette. Says nothing.  
  
Well. He feels like a first class idiot. It wasn’t even supposed to be a line, but he still feels like it should have worked better than it did. He hides his grimace in a chuckle and sort of shrugs his shoulders at her, tries for a self-deprecating smile. She scoffs and rolls her eyes and that was the opposite of what he wanted to happen.   
  
"Ugh, your face,"  she says.   
  
He’s been turned down in the past—not often, but it happens—but never quite in that way. Though the way she’s still looking at him makes him think maybe he’s not being turned down? He doesn’t know. He’s drunk, and she’s being confusing.  
  
"What about it?"  
  
"It just—I want to…"  
  
She’s blushing now and he really thinks he’s not being turned down. His self-deprecating grin is turning self-satisfied, he can tell.  
  
"Want to _what_ , darling?”  
  
The words rush out of her in a breath. “I just want to make out with your face sometimes, okay? _God_.”  
  
He just stares at her. She’s actively  _not_ looking at him now, is back to smoking and staring off into the distance. That’s how he realizes she’s being _serious_ , and that’s what makes him burst out laughing.  
  
"What?" Indignant doesn’t even begin to describe her tone. "It’s a nice face. God, shut up."  
  
He laughs so hard he has to hold onto the balcony railing to stay upright. She still looks wildly offended when he gets ahold of himself.   
  
"As if no one’s ever told you they want to make out with you before."  
  
"Me, yes," he says. "My face, not so much."  
  
"Well like, whatever," she says.  
  
Karen’s craftier than most people give her credit for, and Derek knows she has a fake pout she pulls when she wants things to go her way but isn’t truly bothered. Her face right now, though, brow furrowed and lips pursed, she’s actually upset about this. Which doesn’t even make sense given that this whole thing began with him calling her hot, but still, he feels bad that she’s embarrassed.   
  
"Well." He doesn’t mean to say it as a sentence, but he’s not sure what comes after. He takes a breath. "Your face is, uh, a nice face, too. Obviously."  
  
It’s the obviously part that pulls a smile out of her, though she still doesn’t look at him. He shuffles his feet a bit, sort of kicks at the ground. If she were any other woman, he thinks, this would be easier. He would be better at this.   
  
His hands are in his pockets and one of hers is on her clove and the other is playing with the strings at the end of her silk scarf, paying them way more attention than she’s sent his way this whole time. Except she’s also leaning toward him a little, like maybe she wouldn’t mind being closer. He can accommodate that.  
  
He steps toward her. If she wants to make out with his face, he should let her, right? He gets right up next to her, one hand on the railing behind her but not the other, not boxing her in—not that she’s moving anyway. She’s focusing on her scarf, still, and he thinks he should probably take that clove out of her other hand, because he doesn’t need her dropping it on his back or anything, and he does think that in about a minute here her arms will be wrapped around him and he starts to reach for it and—  
  
 _"Karen_!” It’s Bobby, bursting through the doors to the balcony behind Derek, a loud, stumbling kind of drunk. Drunk enough to probably not even notice how Derek has to take three steps back before he’s an appropriate distance from Karen, whose cheeks are are bright red. “Where are my headphones, Karen? Have you seen my headphones? I don’t know where they are and I  _need_ them. Karen.”  
  
Derek has no fucking idea why Bobby needs headphones when the music coming through the open door behind him is loud enough they’re probably going to get noise complaints. Karen tells him she doesn’t know where they are, and he’s gone just as quickly as he came.   
  
"Drunk much?" Derek doesn’t know why he feels the need to state the obvious. Probably because he’s rather upset that they got interrupted.   
  
Karen giggles, puts her cigarette out against the railing. “Like we’re not?”  
  
Which, well. Derek had kind of forgotten that. They aren’t Bobby drunk, certainly, but Karen did say she wanted to make out with his face. She’s grinning at him now, like she’s in on some joke he isn’t, and he knows their moment for the night has passed.   
  
He figures since he’s drunk, he can get away with, “You know I want to kiss you, right?”  
  
Her smile gets wider, but she makes no indication she’s going to let him. “Yeah.”  
  
"You know it’s not just because I’m drunk, right?"  
  
She tilts her head, studying him. After a moment, she says, “We’ll see. For now, just—” and she hugs him. Wraps her arms tightly around his waist. He’s surprised and awkward, trying to figure out the most platonic way to hug back. She smells like some floral shampoo or perfume or something, and it relaxes him. He sinks a little deeper into the embrace. They usually fit together a little better, she’s a bit shorter than him, but she’s wearing these heels that put her right at his height. He really doesn’t mind.  
  
He holds on until she lets go. He’s never wanted to kiss her more in his life, but not tonight.   
  
"Good night, Derek."  
  
"Good night, darling."  
  
She smiles, one of the self-conscious ones where she’s happy but isn’t sure she’s supposed to be, and heads back inside.   
  
If she were any other woman, Derek thinks, he’d never notice she had different smiles.


End file.
